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10 November 2009

When Will AP, Murdoch Pay Their Sources?

OK, so Associated Press wants to charge bloggers (and others) for using as few as five words of their stories, and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. is talking about removing their content from Google's search services.

Good luck with that.

Now I'm wondering how much those organizations will be compensating the people they interview and other sources for their contributions to "original" content. Information published by AP and News Corp. is a finished product with a set financial value. And all finished products have raw materials. And all makers of finished products pay for those raw materials. It's incomprehensible that the value chain begins and ends with the publisher.

Oh, and guess which website journalists go to first when conducting research for their stories?

I suppose AP stringers could be equipped with waivers for their sources to sign. They'd say something like "I hereby cede all ownership and authority of the information I provide to [insert publisher here], and grant said publisher any and all power to restrict access to this information from those unwilling or unable to pay for it."

Kinda wondering what would happen if Facebook put something like that in their terms of service.